Robin Fawcett On The Verbal Group

A parallel paper given by Professor Robin Fawcett at the International Systemic Functional Congress held at the University of Melbourne in 2000, was titled, if I remember correctly, something like: 'Why Not Abolish The Verbal Group?'

Fawcett's argument was concerned with the experiential structure of the verbal group: Finite and Event and the optional elements Auxiliary and Polarity. There was no discussion of the logical structure of the verbal group.

Blogger Comments:

Now, as Halliday (1994: 196) pointed out, 'the experiential structure is extremely simple; and most of the semantic load is carried by the logical structure, including the tense system'.

The value of the logical structure in elegantly explaining the tense system of English was pointed out to Fawcett by Erich Steiner at the end of the presentation, despite the lack of time afforded by Fawcett for any discussion.